


I Believe We'll Be Okay

by marvelmedigeekfics



Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Everyone Needs A Hug, Firehouse 118 Family (9-1-1), Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:21:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23886634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marvelmedigeekfics/pseuds/marvelmedigeekfics
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley & Firehouse 118 Crew
Comments: 2
Kudos: 66
Collections: 9-1-1 Tales





	I Believe We'll Be Okay

Buck doesn’t think about his best friend almost dying anymore. It was too painful the first time, God knows how he’d react reliving the worst moment of his life over and over again. So he represses it. He drinks. And he goes to rage rooms. And he runs. He runs all the time. He doesn’t sleep most nights, instead running his lungs ragged and his legs shredded.

The world is quiet when you run in the dark. The only company is the stars and the only sound is the city humming. Buck savors the silence, and the pain. If he’s thinking about the pain in his legs, he’s not thinking about whatifwhatifwhatifwhatif. He’s not thinking about that night.

He thrums with energy when he gets home. It’s called a runners high. Even though Buck doesn’t love running, he loves the runners high. For a while, he doesn’t think about anything sad or stressful. He doesn’t have to worry.

He walks into work exhausted almost every day. He tells people he didn’t sleep well last night and drinks a lot of coffee to keep himself from nodding off when they don’t have a call. When there is a call, Buck is wide awake. Adrenaline keeps him going. Even the basic, boring calls spark a reaction in him. He can be thinking about their patients and not about anything else. He can focus.

One day, there is a call. A victim on the pier. Buck hasn’t been back there since... It has been 274 days since the tsunami. Buck hasn’t forgotten any moment of that day since it happened. It’s his own personal hell. He wonders why there’s somethings you can’t quite remember and others that you can never forget. Memory is a funny thing.

The memories of that day flash around Bucks skull. The booth that he and Christopher hid under. The people screaming. There’s nothing louder than the water rushing at them, and for a few seconds that’s all he can hear. He doesn’t hear Bobby calling for him until the third time he does. “Earth to Buck.”

He shakes off the terror of those memories and moves to work with his team. His hesitance doesn’t miss the eyes of his teammates and they all have some idea of why.

Back at the station, Buck lays on the bed, staring at the ceiling unblinking. He can’t do anything to stop the repetive replay of that day.

Chims voice snaps him out of his unhealthy movie day. “What’s up, Buckaroo?”

“Just chilling.” bucks eyes don’t move from the ceiling tiles.

“Is it really chilling when you’ve blinking twice in the last 287 seconds? Or is something bothering you?”

“I’m fine, Chim. Thanks for, ahem, the concern.”

After sitting completely still for over 30 minutes, Buck finally closes his eyes and sleeps. Before long, he is screaming.

All he can see is water. The bubbles from his mouth. The bubbles from Christopher. From Eddie. They’re all drowning. Buck tries to swim but he can’t move. He can’t move.

His eyes fly open and his vision is eclipsed by Hen staring at him. She’s saying something and he only catches the tail end: “—st a dream.” Buck shakes the dream off and protests his fineness. By the look on her face, Hen doesn’t believe him, but she has no time to question it because both of them are running to answer a call a few seconds later.

He thinks his nightmares are forgotten by everyone but him. Everyone has nightmares sometimes. Don’t they?

But they’re not forgotten by Hen, or Chim, who wisely decided to stay out it. Both of them are watching him, but their evidence, is nothing is more than circumstantial. That is until they confront him.

“Okay, Buck, spill.” Hen says, casually sipping her coffee.

“Spill what? I don’t have any secrets.” Buck replies nervously.

“Don’t lie.” Chim chimes in, immediately taking a long sip of his sickeningly sweet drink. Hen shoots him an ungrateful look and morphs her face to shoot Buck a questioning one. Buck shakes his head forcefully and gets up abruptly, effectively slamming the door on Hen and Chim’s attempts to get him to open up.

Buck walks down to, well, he doesn’t know what. He could sleep, but he’d rather wake up screaming where the 118 won’t know about it. He wants to run and drown out the white noise of sea spray. But he can’t leave while he’s on call, so he settles for the punching bag.

He doesn’t bother to wear gloves or any kind of protection, he just punches. He doesn’t stop until the bag gains some resistance in the form of Eddie holding the bag in place.

“Hey, Buck.” He says it casually and Buck immediately lets his hands go slack. “What’s wrong?” His voice gains the edge of concern when the suspicious stillness of Buck clicks in his mind.

“What?” Bucks eyes frantically shoot up to meet Eddie’s. “Nothings wrong.”

“Buuck. I know that look. Now talk.”

Bucks eyes don’t stop looking like deer in the headlights. All at once, instead of seeing Eddie how he is right now, he can only see him dead. Drowning. The images mix with that first day and Buck can’t breathe any more.

From Eddie’s point of view, Buck looks petrified. His eyes are wide and he’s perfectly still. “Buck?” Eddie goes from slightly concerned to extremely concerned when Buck begins to sputter and hyperventilate. Eddie doesn’t miss a second before he has Buck’s hands in his.

“Hey. Hey, Buck. It’s me, Eddie. I’m right here. You’re okay. You’re okay. Breathe. Breathe.”

Buck blinks and it’s excruciatingly slow in his brain. He can hear Eddie speak and all the fog and water in his brain is gone. He listens to Eddie talk to him and the images they fly out as quickly as they came.

“You’re okay.” Buck and Eddie say at the same time, speaking of completely different contexts.

\-- 

Eddie walks into Bobby’s office at the end of that shift, clenching his fist nervously. “Do you need something, Eddie?” 

Eddie clears in throat and shifts his eyes to not look at Bobby. “It’s Buck.” 

Bobby’s eyebrows rise in worry and he drops his pen from his fingers. He was still in paperwork mode, but now he’s completely in worried about Buck mode. “What about Buck?” His mind is moving back to everyday that Buck has gotten hurt. The ladder truck, the embolism, the day after Halloween. 

Eddie looks like he’d rather jump into a vat of concrete than talk about this. He just got his friendship with Buck back to a place of normalcy, and now he’s probably going to destroy it trying to help Buck. “He had a panic attack at the pier today. And one when he looked at me earlier.” 

“What are you saying?” Bobby doesn’t want to jump to conclusions, or bench Buck if he doesn’t need it. That turned out bad enough the first time. 

“I’m not a therapy kind of guy, but is Buck?” Eddie doesn’t answer Bobby’s question straight, but finally meets his eyes. 

“The last time he went to therapy, he had sex with his therapist, Eddie.”

“Excuse me? Are you serious?” Eddie’s eyes just about bugged out of his skull. 

Bobby nodded, gravely serious, still waiting for Eddie to get to his point. They sit there in silence for a minute, neither one of them wanting to say what they’re both thinking. 

“Buck should go to therapy.” Eddie sighs and drops down into one of the chairs across from Bobby. 

“I’ll schedule it. Do you need anything else?” Bobby pens a note to himself on the notepad in front of his computer and turns back to Eddie, who is standing again and already halfway to the door. He shakes his head and thanks Bobby, obviosuly trying to get out as quickly as possible. 

\--

Buck goes home that night more exhausted than usual. All he wants to do is crawl in bed, but he can never sleep. It’d just be a waste of time. He gets up off of the couch and moves for his shoes. Maybe after a run he’ll be so exhausted he won’t lay awake pushing the thoughts of Eddie almost dying out of his mind. 

He knows the area around his apartment complex intimately and he has no problem just letting his feet take him wherever. He doesn’t have the energy to discover something new. He doesn’t have the energy to block out the awful things his brain keeps replaying. 

Not all of them are of Eddie being trapped down there, a few are of him being trapped under the ladder truck. But the ones that keep eclipsing his vision never even happened. Eddie’s the one under the ladder truck. Whoever’s holding the camera moves it down the length of the truck and Maddie is trapped too, and so is Chimney. They’re holding hands, but it doesn’t even seem like they’re alive. Hen and Bobby are trapped too, begging for help. Christopher’s voice rings loud in his mind and all Buck wants to do is save them. But he can’t move. He’s buried 1000 feet underground and he can’t climb and save them. He can never save them. 

Buck screams, startling the birds. There’s no one around to glare at him and he’s grateful, because there’s no way he could explain why he’s screaming in the middle of the sidewalk. He pants weakly and wipes the dripping sweat off of his forehead. 

He walks back to his apartment, climbs the stairs and lays down in bed. The last time he stared at the ceiling tiles like this, he couldn’t find the energy to do anything except lay there. Back then, he was still on “medical leave”. He was benched and replaced. Buck hated to remember it that way, but it was true. He would never give them a reason to bench him again. 

\-- 

Buck walks into work, forcing himself to press down the sleep deprivation and the anxiety. Bobby called him and asked him to come to work early. That’s never good. 

By the time Buck made it to Bobby’s office, someone else was already there. Buck didn’t want to interrupt, so he stopped outside the door. Bobby saw him and waved him in. 

“Am I interrupting something?” Buck whispers, wringing his hands. 

“No. You’re right on time. This is Diane. I’ll leave you two.” 

“Bobby--” Buck says, cursing when his words only hit the door. He doesn’t look at Diane until she speaks. 

“Buck, right?” 

Buck forces himself to look at her, normally. Not with scrutiny. If he puts off the air of fine, maybe she’ll believe him. He knows who she is, and not just because of the job listed on her badge. He nods and smiles at her, forcing himself to drop his hands loosely to his sides. 

“Let’s talk, shall we?” She gestures to the chairs and waits for Buck to sit before she does. Maybe she’s worried about him bolting. He glances to the clock, ticking vaguely in the corner. He has 37 minutes until his shift starts. He can handle 37 minutes, can’t he? 

“What about?” His voice sounds fake cheery, and he leaves a bad taste in his mouth. 

“I hear you’re not a big fan of water.” She doesn’t say it like a question, and she’s not looking for an explanation. He can tell that from the way her eyes don’t pierce into his soul. The last time he went to therapy, it ended with her knowing nothing about his mind, and knowing a lot about everything else. 

Buck shrugs, “I guess the tsunami hasn’t left my system yet.” He knows he told himself to act fine, like could look fine. But he wants to talk, at least a little bit. 

“The tsunami was an awful thing.” 

“No kidding.” Buck laughs wryly. She catches him off guard with her next question. 

“What’s the hardest thing you’ve ever done?” 

Buck blinks harshly in surprise, “What do you mean? Hard in what way?”

Diane shrugs, her eyes not moving from his face. 

“I guess, trying to shut my emotions off for the SEALS.” He shrugs like he’s not even sure that’s the right answer. 

“Why is that?” 

“That’s not me!” Buck gets defensive and then sits back in defeat. He blew his cover of fineness. 

“What’s not you?” 

“Hiding my emotions. Being a machine.”

“That’s a good thing, Buckley. Emotions are good for you. When you feel them, that is.” 

Buck stares at her for a second before stuttering out, “I...I feel my emotions. Sometimes...too...too much.” 

“You can’t feel something too much. There’s no limit of what or how much you can feel.” 

“There is when other people can’t handle it.” He runs his hand over his face and sighs. He’s bad at hiding things. Even this woman, who he’s known for a total of 12 minutes already got him to spill. 

“Have they showed they can’t handle it?” 

Buck’s silence is enough of an answer for her. But she doesn’t say anything else, until he shakes his head almost imperceptively. 

“I think you’re scared to let them see you. Afraid they won’t like what they see?” 

Buck still doesn’t say anything at all, but he hears every word. Who knows how much of the mess of the past year could’ve been avoided if he would just talk. Talking is hard. He swallows, or tries to, the giant lump in his throat. 

“Try them. Maybe they’ll surprise you.” Both of them sit there, without saying another word for the next fifteen minutes. Buck’s thinking about how he’s supposed to tell them. What he should tell them. And most of all, how they will react to the baring of his soul. 

\-- 

Leave it to Chimney to notice Buck walking out of the Captain’s office first, before Buck even makes it to the stairs. Hen and Eddie follow Chimney’s gaze to Buck. 

“Hey, guys.” Buck is wringing his hands again, but he looks each of them in the eyes. The rest of the station hasn’t noticed him looking like he just got fired, and for that, he’s grateful. 

“What’s up, Buck?” Hen says, continuing to spread jam on her toast without breaking eye contact. Eddie looks at Buck calmly and softly leans against the counter. It’s not comfortable, but neither is this conversation. Buck clears in throat and it sounds forced and way too loud in his ears. Maybe they’ll surprise him. 

“I’m afraid of water.” He blurts out, and somehow everyone that matters understands what he means, despite his words come out mushed together and held together with sadness. 

Chimney almost tackles him with the weight of his hug and before Buck knows it Chimney’s shoulder is soaked and three more people are hugging him in every direction. Hen, Eddie and Bobby. 

The sirens echoing through the room are the only thing that breaks them up. Buck feels the crushing weight he’s been carrying for 287 days tumble to the floor as he runs down the stairs with his team. Family. 

\--

The next day after shift, when the 5 of them and their families are happily settled in Bobby and Athena’s house, enjoying the beautiful weather, Eddie whispers in Buck’s ear. “I’m proud of you.” 

Buck spilled the pertinent details when they had put out that fire. He told them about losing Christopher during the tsunami, then losing them, and then losing Eddie. They listened to him. Chimney actually tackled him with a hug. They know now, and things are only looking up. 

“Thanks, Eddie.” They clink their bottles together and smile. They’re okay. With all the love between them, they’ll also be okay somehow.


End file.
